Monthly Archives: January 2008

Guild members should track night work

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As our members should know by now, the company has stopped paying $3 “night differential” after illegally imposing its work rules.

The Guild is advising its members to continue to note with an “N” on their time cards when they work at night and then cross out the “N.” Then also keep a list of what nights you have worked since Jan. 1.

This will help build a record of who has worked nights in 2008. Should the Labor Board declare the impasse illegal, one option for remedy could include requiring the company to pay out the night differential it has withheld.

The crossed out “N” on your time card and your own list of what nights you worked could be useful evidence to determine how much money you are owed should the Labor Board choose to take this action as a remedy.

Guild marches on MLK Day

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About two dozen members of the Dayton Newspaper Guild marched on Monday in Dayton’s annual Martin Luther King Day rally. The event was a huge success all the way around. Guild members passed out leaflets letting people know about our fight for fairness at the Dayton Daily News and even got to meet briefly and be photographed with Gov. Ted Strickland. For photos and video, go here.

In April 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. went to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. He paid with his life.

This year, Dayton Daily News management has finally made King’s birthday a paid holiday — 22 years after it became a federal holiday — but only offered it as part of a larger change that includes drastic cuts in sick leave, disability benefits and personal days. The DDN is using King’s day to cover for a huge takeaway.

The DDN has also illegally broken off talks with the Dayton Newspaper Guild, the union that represents 150 editorial workers.

It’s time for the DDN to finally honor King’s legacy properly — by treating workers fairly and bargaining in good faith with the Guild.

It was encouraging to see so many of our members using the King holiday to march in his honor. It was a bit disappointing, though, to only see a couple of our managers at the march.

In past years, when MLK Day was a work day, the company sent a contingent from its “diversity council” to attend the march. This year, with the day off, management apparently found other things to do on MLK Day.

DDN: Editorial workers aren’t worth much

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On Jan. 11, DDN editorial workers will receive their 2008 pay raises and they will not be pretty. While the company remains stable and profitable, it has chosen not to reward the hardworking people that produce the content that make its print and online products sellable and make this company valuable.

We expect everyone will soon be told their raises by their bosses. When you receive your raise, consider that the raise data provided by the company to the Guild demonstrates these three fallacies:

–Raises frequently are not connected to the quality of an individual’s work performance.

–There is no dire financial pressure forcing the company to treat most editorial workers unfairly when it comes to pay raises.

–Redlining is a vindictive process through which the company picks and chooses to punish some of our members without regard to their own rationale for the purpose of redlining.

Overall, the raise pool for the editorial department was 2.01 percent. That includes redlining bonuses in lieu of base pay raises. Without the bonuses added in, the base wage average raise for the department was 1.77 percent.

Here are some facts and figures from the raise data provided by the company:

–Highest percentage raise overall: 4.71

–Lowest percentage raise of those not redlined: 0.50

–Top 10 raises went to: 6 copy editors/arists, 3 online workers, 1 photographer

–Bottom 10 raises of those not redlined went to: 8 reporters/editorial writers, 1 copy editor/artist, 1 photographer

–There were:

33 base pay raises over 2.0
39 base pay raises at 2.0
59 base pay raises under 2.0

–The top raises by category were:

Online: 4.71
Copy editor/artist: 4.11
Photographer: 3.89
Reporter/editorial writer: 3.75
EA: 2.38

–The worst raises by category were:

Online: 1.70
Copy editor/artist: 0
Photographer: 0.75
Reporter/editorial writer: 0
EA: 2.00

REDLINING

–There were 11 redlined editorial workers this year, up from 7 last year. Those redlined included:

10 people redlined with no base raise
1 person partially redlined with some base raise

–Of the 11 people who were redlined, only five were among the top 10 wage earners in the bargaining unit.

–Three of the top 10 highest editorial wage earners received base pay raises of 2 percent or better

–Only one of the bottom 10 lowest editorial wage earners received a raise of better than 2 percent

Questions to consider:

–After 3 percent raises in editorial for nearly all of the last decade, why were raises so much lower in 2007 even though the company’s financial position is not significantly changed?

–We have already seen concrete examples of people who received good performance reviews but got low raises. How does this make sense with the company’s supposed move toward a “high performance culture?”

–If the company needs to redline good performers and cap their pay to control costs, why aren’t the redlined workers all among the highest paid editorial workers? Why does the company pick and choose to punish only certain high wage earners?

–Why isn’t the money saved by redlining people at the high end of the wage scale used to bring up the lowest salaries at the bottom of the scale?